1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to technology for monitoring applications in a computing environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
The growing presence of the Internet as well as other computer networks such as intranets and extranets has brought many new applications in e-commerce, education and other areas. Organizations increasingly rely on such applications to carry out their business or other objectives, and devote considerable resources to ensuring that the applications perform as expected. To this end, various application management techniques have been developed.
For example, instrumentation can be added to an application, middleware or other software, to provide a trace, which is a detailed record of the steps a computer program executes. The trace identifies each method that is invoked in a transaction and can provide data which is associated with the method, such as the start and stop time. However, the instrumentation is typically predefined so that it cannot be easily modified after it is deployed. As a result, there is difficulty in adapting the instrumentation to accommodate different protocols and add new capabilities.